Some Pennsylvania Farmers Still Tallying Losses Sfter Storms
Robert Fitz has spent every year of his life on his family's York Township farm, and he said he has never seen anything like the weather that stormed through the area over the past couple of weeks.
"Our rain gauge got washed away," said the 55-year-old owner of Fitz Brothers' Farm. "We had about 17 inches of rain in two weeks."
Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee cost the farmer about $5,000, as fruit, vegetables and plants rotted from too much rain. Though the Springwood Road farmer is one of several area growers to lose crops, area farm agencies said York County's farms held up well during the storms.
For those that didn't, the losses were substantial.
Fitz said his tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupes and watermelons cracked because of too much rain. His cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli plants are wilting and dying "like the roots rotted," he said.
"A third of the planting is gone," he said. "I also had a planting of spinach that -- I've never experienced this -- it just melted it from the rainy, cloudy weather. I've been a farmer all my life and I've never seen cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and broccoli die like this. I have never seen this much water, and I've been on the land all my life. This was even more than (Hurricane) Agnes."
What wasn't damaged by the rain was "chewed up" by hail last Sunday night, Fitz said.
"This has been a very tough year to be a farmer," he said. "And for a small guy, it's really not worth what you pay in a premium for crop insurance."
Damage not widespread: President Barack Obama has declared Pennsylvania a disaster, and it's likely that some emergency loans will be made available for farmers, said Rick Csutoras, county executive director of the Farm Service Agency under the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
There also are "standing" disaster programs that open when 30 percent of agriculture in a county is destroyed, but Csutoras said damage in York County was mostly contained to areas where streams overran.
The FSA's county committee estimated only between 3 and 5 percent of all York County crops were damaged, he said. Though that number doesn't include fruit growers, he said the agency isn't aware of widespread, substantial damage for growers of any kind.
"Most of what I can tell was buildings, roads and bridges," he said. "The crops, all in all, fared OK. If you're the guy who happens to be by the stream, you're probably thinking different."
John Rowehl, extension educator at York's Penn State Cooperative Extension, said no significant damage has been reported to his office.
Though some farm lanes have been "washed out," most of York County's fields are on higher ground, he said.
"The only thing I know, the tomatoes in my garden, blight wiped everything out," he said. "I guess because it was so wet for so long."
All wet: Tomatoes were one of a few casualties at East Manchester Township's Triple A Dwarf Acres.
Owners Ed and Barb Ahrens estimated they also lost about $4,000 in crops because of the weather.
Ed Ahrens said his tomatoes were "a complete loss in the field" because the rainy conditions caused them to split and "turn to mush."
About a quarter of the apples Ahrens said he intended to pick over the next couple of weeks were ruined. Some of the trees were uprooted because the ground was too wet. He estimated about 160 of his 1,600 trees either dropped apples or were uprooted, he said.
"I don't make cider out of dropped apples," he said. "I'll sell some as deer and horse feed."
About 75 percent of the last four varieties of his peaches were also knocked down, he said.
"They couldn't take all that rain," he said. "A peach, once that hits the ground, you can't salvage that. It bruises, and as soon as they get bruise or cut, they're susceptible to brown rot."
He said the rain hurt sales at his home-based produce stand, and not just because of the crop loss.
"The ground is saturated to my driveway," he said. "I put sign up that we're closed because some people (drove) in, and it wasn't pretty."
He said he's not planning to seek any assistance, and Fitz said he'll also make do on his own.
"The smaller guys like myself, we just suck it up," Fitz said.
He said there are some days when he wonders if farming is really what he wants to do with his life, but there's something instilled in the generations of family farmers that keeps him from quitting.
"Looking toward better times is in our blood," he said.
--Reach Christina Kauff man at 505-5436, ckauffma n@yorkdispatch.com, or follow her on Twitter at @dis patchbizwiz.
